Cards Post of the Week – Dec. 2 through 8

Recognizing the very best post of the past week from our message board community of thousands of St. Louis Cardinals fans the world over.

As we do each and every week here at stlcardinals.scout.com, we call out the best of the best - the "Post of the Week" from our Scout.com Cardinals message board.

Here is the link to the Message Boards, of which there are several – for fantasy players, insider information for subscribers, general topics, non-Cardinals sports and more.

This article covers the week ending Saturday, December 8.

Last week, we missed a standout post but want to call it out now. At the bottom of page one of the thread "Cabrera & Dontrelle - What would it Take !", poster "easton714" covered some important tradeoffs the Cardinals would have needed to consider when deciding whether to make adding more pitching or hitting their top priority for 2008.

The man agent Scott Boras said would fetch $100 million this off-season, Andruw Jones, ended up having to settle for about a third of that. Among the many posts on the thread "Andruw Jones to the Dodgers for 2 years 36 million" included ones from "C2kSeven" on page one and "thejager" on page two. The first explains why he believes overpaying for Jones or Torii Hunter would be a bad move while the second built on those points, offering a 2008 outlook that is not entirely gloomy.

In the yearly Rule 5 draft this past week, the Cardinals selected a very interesting outfielder, Brian Barton. On page one of the thread entitled "Cards Take Brian Barton in Rule 5…", "jmodene" looked at the Cardinals' possible 25-man roster starting the 2008 season considering the new addition.

On page two of the thread, "Something brewing in St. Louis", "easton714" realistically stepped into the general manager's shoes, laying out the tradeoffs facing him in several key decisions.

In the aftermath of the Cardinals' somewhat controversial signing of free agent Cesar Izturis two weeks ago, the busy thread called "Bad signings?" continued into its second week. On page three, "philskill" ran a comparison of A.J. Burnett and Chris Carpenter, showing why he believes the former is worth his $11 million salary.

"philskill" had a busy week, also starting a thread under the title "And the redbirds win the 2008 world series! (long)". The focus was a drill down on the history of the Cardinals in each of the last 12 seasons and projecting them into a possible 2008 outcome.

For the posts noted above, "philskill" is our latest winner of the "Post of the Week" award. In recognition, "philskill" collects a free four-week subscription to stlcardinals.scout.com and all the other great sites in the Scout.com network.